In the past few weeks, Marco Arment, co-founder of Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, released version 2 of his podcast application for iOS, Overcast, for free. There's only one in-app purchase, which doesn't unlock any additional functionality, but just sends some money Arment's way. Call it patronage, if you will. Coinciding with the release, he published a blog post in which he states that any indie developer can just give away their full work for free, so his 'new' model should work for everyone.

Obviously, this caused a bit of a ruckus, since it's easy for a multimillionaire like Arment to give away his work for free. His situation is clearly unique, and most independent application developers barely get by as it is. Or, as Samantha Bielefeld puts it:

The issue isn't that Marco is successful, there are many app developers who would love to be in the same position. He has earned his time in the spotlight, and it's only natural for him to take advantage of it. Though to state that anyone can simply do the same thing and be successful, is just plain wrong. He has accelerated the race to the bottom for the podcast app category, and he comes bearing a huge following of people who will give him money for nothing in return except for the possibility of further development of Overcast. The average developer isn't being called out by name by Phil Schiller for something negative they have written about Apple. The only thing "indie" about Marco is that he works by himself. He is far removed from the typical experience of app creators, and even if it's deserved, it wouldn't hurt for him to be a little more humble, and realistic.

And she's completely and utterly right, of course.

This doesn't surprise me, though. Over three years ago, when the first Retina MacBook Pro came out, Arment and I had a Twitter exchange about something he said: he said that any web developer should immediately run out and buy this €2300 laptop because retina would be the future, and if they didn't, they weren't taking their work seriously.

I pointed out to him that for the majority of people working on the web, €2300 is a lot of money, and most of us don't have that kind of money just lying around. It might be pocket change to a millionaire, but it's almost a full month's salary for me (now - not so much in 2012, when I earned much less than I do now), and in many places in the world with active web developers, it's probably several months' worth of salary.

This exchange with Arment has always stuck with me, because I wanted to make sure that I would never turn out this way. I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination (i.e., Dutch standards!), but despite my income being decidedly middle-class, I still belong in the, uh, I don't know, top 5% or so of the world - just by virtue of being Dutch. I'm 'rich' enough to buy several new phones, tablets, and computers a year to make sure I remain familiar with as many platforms as possible for OSNews, but I realise damn well that I'm incredibly lucky I can do so, and would never just assume that everyone else can as well.

So no, this kind of attitude doesn't surprise me at all. I call this the Donald Trump reasoning: everybody can be rich, if only they were Donald Trump.

Yeah, that is the dictionary definition, and it isn't wrong. But in the US, although there are quite a lot of permutations of social policy and fiscal policy positions described as conservative, generally speaking conservative = for smaller government, reduced spending, lower taxes, less regulation - generally a push towards reducing the governments involvement rather than seeing it as a solution to all problems. Plus a pretty serious bend towards "christian" values, i.e. pro-life, creationism, etc.

Conservatives generally lean republican, although that party misses the boat entirely on many of these issues (particularly on how the government spends money).

Im not saying I completely agree with that in the broad sense. Im an atheist and I certainly believe in evolution, so I don't identify with "traditional" conservatives on most social issues. But I want sane fiscal policy, and in my opinion democratic/liberal/socialist fiscal policy is plain insanity. But then again republican fiscal policy has been no better in the last 20 years either...

I look at all the major candidates right now and I feel like the inmates are running the asylum. Half of them are completely batshit crazy and the other half are liars and/or crooks. I just want a rationale, reasonable, forward thinking person that would balance social needs with responsible fiscal policy - no such candidate exists...

But Ill vote for anyone before the orange haired idiot. Sanders at least seems like an intelligent, honest, and well-intentioned guy, I just don't agree with him on policy.

But I want sane fiscal policy, and in my opinion democratic/liberal/socialist fiscal policy is plain insanity. But then again republican fiscal policy has been no better in the last 20 years either...

Maybe this helps: instead of focusing on money, try focusing on what works. The cold and harsh truth is that the most developed countries with the lowest poverty ratings, best healthcare, best education, and happiest citizens are all... European welfare states. The very thing so many conservative Americans seem to fear.

Now, I'm not saying you can just apply our policies 1:1 to America, but there's no denying that a lot of things the US gets wrong, we get right. Learn from it - even if that means possibly maybe perhaps accepting that something you consider as "socialist" just happen to be the least worst ways of achieving something.

I'm generally right-wing in my country in that I prefer small, transparent government which focuses on enabling the pursuit of happiness of each individual without harming others - but despite that, I strongly stand for traditional "socialist" ideals. My government MUST ensure healthcare and education for all citizens, a healthy, beautiful environment, a push towards modern and clean energy, 100% strict separation between corporations and government, top-notch infrastructure, a heavily regulated financial sector consisting of many small banks and institutions instead of a few large ones, and so on. I also happen to be in favour of something EU-like, but I'm strongly anti EU-as-it-currently-exists.

My point: don't let the polarisation instilled by US media define all "socialist" ideals as bad (or all "conservative" ideals as bad, for that matter!). Take a step back, remove all the labels, take in all information from all over the world about things that are proven to work or not work, and base your judgment on that instead of on labels.

I don't want to come off as condescending (I probably failed!), and I certainly don't want to imply you're not already doing this, by the way! Consider the "you" in this comment as a "general you ".